<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Play Pretend by V6ilill</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27118243">Play Pretend</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/V6ilill/pseuds/V6ilill'>V6ilill</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Legacy of a Lie [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Dark, Asshole Narrator, Delusions, F/M, Hallucinations, Horror, Insanity, Jealousy, Love Triangles, One-Sided Relationship, Pining, Possessive Behavior, Psychological Horror, Slut Shaming, Talking To Dead People, Two Shot, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Love, Victim Blaming</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:53:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,232</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27118243</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/V6ilill/pseuds/V6ilill</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Sole Survivor is not Nora. But she wishes she was</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Female Sole Survivor/Male Sole Survivor, Male Sole Survivor/Original Female Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Legacy of a Lie [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2056569</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Alice is not Shaun’s mother. But she wishes she was.</p><p>When war wiped out her country and she was ushered underground, she saw Nate enter the opposite cryopod, holding his little boy. She smiled and waved, and he waved back. But he didn’t smile. He only smiled at Nora.</p><p>Then Nate was dead, an unrotting corpse forever preserved in perfect stasis, mouth open in a final, desperate scream that no one ever heard.</p><p>And Shaun was gone.</p><p>Alice is not Nora. But she wishes she was.</p><p>Nate always loved her. His darling little angel, the perfect lawyer and the perfect wife who can do no wrong. The best mother in the world - Nate’s own words, spoken the day his son was born.</p><p>Alice is not Shaun’s mother. But she should’ve been.</p><p>She would’ve been a better wife. A better mother. A better lawyer, if Nate really cared for that.</p><p>But now Nate is gone. And Shaun is taken.</p><p>Alice is free. Nora, in the cryopod next to her, is not.</p><p>Alice breaks the glass and puts a gun to her head. Nora blinks, staring sleepily at the barrel.</p><p>“Nate was meant to be with me,” Alice snarls “Now he’s dead because of you.”</p><p>If Nora hadn’t produced a son, Nate would’ve been left alone. Left alone to see how much Alice cared for him. Left alone to survive the apocalypse together. But she cannot hate Shaun for this, that smiling little boy who almost looks like Alice. In a just world, he would've been hers anyway.</p><p>“What?” Nora jerks awake, mouth falling open.</p><p>Alice shoots. Splatters of brain matter never looked better.</p><p>She lets her hair out of a braid. She is Nora now. Nate was her husband. Shaun is their son.</p><p>And she will go to the ends of the earth to find him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It was requested of me to continue this. Here's an even darker second part. Trigger warning for noncon and necrophilia.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Even in death, Nora could ruin everything. She killed Nate - made that son who ended him - but that was not the end of it. Nora’s ghost followed Alice, making it so that she could never forget - never, never! - never take her rightful place.</p><p>“You will not take my place,” she said when Codsworth, that senile lump of rust asked if ‘mum’ was really back, if ‘mister’ was really dead, if the young’un was really taken “And you will suffer for your insolence.”</p><p>Alice just scoffed, and patted the floating trashcan on the head and told it how she was going to get Shaun back. And then she laughed at Nora’s folly, because what could a ghost, a corpse in a cryocoffin do to her? Nothing, that is what.</p><p>“You may have taken my place,” Nora said when Alice was at the detective’s, telling him how horribly her husband was taken from her “But you will find no happiness in it.”</p><p>Alice just shed a tear for her dearie, reminiscing briefly on the good life SHE had with her husband, until the detective reminded her to get back on track. And then she laughed at Nora’s madness, because what could a wrongful wife, an impostor do now that she was dead? Nothing, that is what!</p><p>“You may call yourself by my name,” Nora said when Alice smashed her powerfist into the smug, slimy face of her husband’s murderer, his smirk taunting her with Nate’s absence even in death “But you will never know Nate’s love.”</p><p>Alice just smashed that murderer - monster MONSTER - in the face again, until he was just another stain on her boots. And then she laughed at Nora’s insolence, because she was fighting a lost battle, she should’ve known better when she seduced Nate, the lying, scheming bitch-</p><p>“You may have them all fooled,” Nora said when Alice saw her Shaun - HER son, no matter what the papers said they lied lied - her Shaun, old and wrinkled, and so indifferent to Nate’s death, like this great man who was ten - hundred, thousand - times the man Shaun could ever hope to be meant nothing “But you will never have a son.”</p><p>Alice just laughed, because this old man wasn’t her real son, wasn’t her real Shaun just as certainly as Nate had never truly loved Nora, and laughed and laughed-</p><p>-and laughed and laughed and laughed. How silly of her, to try to be Nora when all Nora had was taken from her! How silly of her become a wife, only to be a widow, to become a mother, only to have no son. Silly, silly! Oh how Nora had played her, made Alice think she had a chance at happiness, at raising another in Nate’s memory. How silly!</p><p>Alice returned, and found Nora. Her eyes had rotted out and maggots feasted on her face, but how she laughed! How she laughed at the success of her callous scheme, how she smiled at the knowledge that Alice was forever deprived of the light of her life! How she laughed, and watched Nate’s ever-perfect visage through the glass, together with him in death!</p><p>Alice smashed that ugly face in and burned those eyes out and stomped that skull to pieces. No petty whore would look at her man like that. In the everlasting ice, Nate did not rot, his beatific, angelic features eternally enshrined. In the everlasting ice, his gunshot wound was the only piece of him missing.</p><p>That gave Alice an idea.</p><p>When the Institute ruled over all, and that pretender Shaun was dead dead dead (his pretender copy of a child that never grew up dead dead dead like it should be) and his children - Nate’s grandchildren - enforced the new world order, Alice sent for her husband and had the finest minds of the planet work tirelessly to revive him.</p><p>Alas, the bullet had gone through his brain. The vegetative state was permanent, and though a copy could be built to look just like him, the brightest mind of the century had been snuffed out. Alice watched him every day, and talked to him, and held his hand, but all he did was turn and toss and flinch when struck.</p><p>He still loved her, after all that, even if he could never return. Even if his mind was struck, his base instincts knew his soulmate.</p><p>And Alice got to know him in turn. He deserved to have children that were of true flesh, not those machine-clones of his pretender son. He deserved to have his bloodline become the pinnacle of humanity, their superiority assured. Besides, Alice deserved to love her husband in every way she could, now that she had him. Didn’t she? Didn’t she?</p><p>“I think it’s twins this time, my dear,” Alice guided her husband’s warm, yet limp hand to her bulging stomach “Isn’t that lovely? If it’s girls, Nathalie and Natella, Nathanael and Nathaniel for boys. How does that sound, honey?”</p><p>Nate, of course, agreed. He trusted his wife’s judgment on the matter.</p><p>“You know, Nat really wants sisters,” Alice continued warmly, life support machines beeping around her “But Nathan says one is more than enough and Nates agrees with him. Nate doesn’t have an opinion yet, he just babbles along. Natie doesn’t really care, he’s more concerned over the cute girl at school! You know, the one with the curls who does ballet?”</p><p>Alice finally had her man, and a family together, so Nora could cry in the corner like the little bitch she was. And oh, how she was crying!</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>